UNHAPPY LANDINGS

I have no memory of being hit. I recall only a dazed awareness that something was wrong, very wrong ...that Charles Macatee was swinging our plane into position for a landing ... asking the tower for runway lights ... calling for an ambulance to meet the plane.

Then Tom Wright, the third man aboard, was helping me out of the cockpit, where I had been flying copilot, and onto a couch so that he could take my place and assist in the landing.

Interminable minutes later (less than three, actually), I was being lifted into the ambulance. Exactly seven minutes after the accident, I was getting skilled emergency treatment in an Air Force hospital.

Our plane, a research DC-3, had been on the last leg of a flight from Chicago via Washington that April evening. We'd been skimming over Long Island after sunset and were preparing to land at Grumman Field when the craft was struck. Captain Macatee (who later was to pilot the first scheduled jetliner across America) had no idea what had hit us until after landing, when he found a five-pound mallard duck in the cockpit.

The big bird, one of a migrating pair that had collided with us, had crashed through the windshield and struck me full in the face, bouncing my head against the aluminum bulkhead behind me. A large dent in the heavy metal testified to the force of that blow. Later, when I had a chance to examine it, I realized that the bulkhead had actually kept my neck from snapping.

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